The Colour of Home
by andromeda's song
Summary: A post-Reichenbach reunion one-shot based on some achingly superb fan art I saw. No slash, but some love between friends fluff. Told from John's POV. Includes great violin music. Rated T only for a few choice words and swollen knuckles.


**A/N: This is not how I actually think the Post-Reichenbach reunion will go. I imagine that it will have a lot more angst than this because…hey, if you held the hearts of a million fangirls/boys in the palm of your hand what would you do? This one-shot is based on some incredible fan art I saw on Pinterest. I'd give you a link but I just…didn't think of that… my bad. Hopefully my words will paint the picture I saw. No slash, just the love between friends. Told from John's POV. (And I don't own a thing, as you know.)  
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The Colour of Home

They say time heals all wounds, but as a doctor, an army veteran, and a hearty sceptic, I've never really bought into that. Time doesn't necessarily heal all wounds. Sure, if you've cut your arm or broken a bone, time will heal that and you'll be left only with a sliver of white, raised skin or a minor twinge when it rains. Hell, I know all about that. I did get shot, you know. My shoulder still flares up a bit whenever the weather turns, which happens a lot in England.

But what happens to the pain that time cannot possibly heal? Take my PTSD for example. When I came home from Afghanistan, I had all the "normal" reactions—night terrors, flashbacks, tremors, and even a psychosomatic limp. It would appear that war has that effect on people, strangely enough… There was always something hard about the duality that I felt in war…the conflict. On one hand, I lived for the thrill of it…not the killing people part, but the adrenaline rush from the chase, the hunt, and the sense of need to protect those around me. It filled me up and gave me purpose. It also conflicted somewhat with my healer's heart.

Anyway, when I came home to London after being shot, the effects of the war began to assault my unconscious mind. When you're sitting in the middle of a desert and you've got a million things on your mind, you don't notice what's happening to you and to your buddies all that much. You don't have time to notice the way your heart shreds itself a little bit more every time some nineteen year old kid who has no business being in Afghanistan gets himself killed. You don't have time to think about how the horrors of war are steadily invading every inch of your life and have begun to seep into your subconscious like a deadly gas. It's only when you're home in the quiet that you begin to realise what's happening to you…and what has happened to you without your consent. War is always sweet to those who have never experienced it. For those of us who manage to come back alive…we spend the rest of our time trying to decide whether we loved it, hated it, or both. I've always thought that if that answer came easy to you, you hadn't thought about it enough.

Afghanistan haunted my life, my dreams, and my relationships. I wouldn't leave my flat for days on end, the nightmares kept me up all night long, and I had a therapist, for god's sake. Me, Dr. John H. Watson of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, had an honest to god therapist. And she thought I had trust issues… of course I had trust issues! I went to Afghanistan for fuck's sake. I was a soldier. And the more and more I saw this therapist and with each passing day and each passing nightmare, I was convinced that the phrase "time heals all wounds" was just a crock of crap. Somewhere in the back of my doctor's mind, I knew that time would never heal any of me… yeah, my shoulder was technically fine. Maybe the nightmares would settle down…maybe even my limp would go away. But I would never actually heal.

And then I met Mike Stamford in the park one afternoon. I don't know if Mike will truly ever understand how grateful I am that I met him that day and that he stopped to talk to me. I was a little hesitant at first, I mean… I was never really good at the whole hey-I-haven't-seen-you-in-awhile-let's-go-catch-up thing. But I cannot even begin to imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't have gone with Mike that day. Mike introduced me to Sherlock Holmes… the strangest and maddest human being I've ever encountered… a self-proclaimed high-functioning sociopath with a penchant for bizarre crime, dark suits, and body parts in the fridge. He was simply a madman…he told me some of the most intimate things about my life within seconds of seeing me for the first time. He jumped for joy when a detective inspector showed up in the flat we intended to share and announced a fourth body in a string of serial suicides. He declared it to be equivalent to Christmas and then put on that bloody coat and dashed out the door. But then…oh but then… Sherlock came back and changed my life…literally.

In the end, it wasn't time that healed my war wounds. It wasn't time at all…it was Sherlock Holmes that healed me. I'm not sure if he ever knew that…I mean sure, he recognized that he could get rid of my limp and my tremors just by bringing the adrenaline rush back into my life (and I didn't have to kill people….well, not often, anyway….). I also know that he would play certain melodies on his violin to calm my nightmares as I slept (he probably noticed that I noticed him, but he didn't stop…). He tried to pass himself off as being aloof and not interested in anything that didn't serve him directly, but he was…so much more caring and kind than people gave him credit for.

I'm not an artist by any means, but if I were to paint the colours of my life before I met Sherlock, I think they would have been very…light colours. They would have been pale colours, faded and washed out. There would have been lots of grey and lots of beige…plain colours for the plain life of John Watson. I didn't realise what kinds of colours I could have painted until Sherlock came into my life. After I met him, I know there would have been more vibrancy and more energy in the colours. I would have painted bright yellows and happy reds and the brightest blues. There would have been greens to rival the richest grasses and violets that teased the evening skies.

Sherlock was maddening in literally every sense of the word. I've never met anyone who could be so selfish, childish, petulant, irritating, and…well the list goes ever on. He left human heads in the fridge for god's sake…right next to the human food. He chased after criminals, whipped bodies with riding crops, went to Buckingham Palace in a sheet, broke into a top secret government facility, put what he thought was drugged sugar in my coffee, locked me in a lab and made me hallucinate, and got involved with a madman's games that ended with…

I couldn't help the choked cry that escaped my lips as I stopped in front of a black marble headstone. The cool, golden letters that spelled out his name seemed so innocent but if I could have, I would have chiselled them all off the stone. This is why I don't believe in that crock about time healing all wounds. It has been three years since Sherlock… since Sherlock died and I still feel as miserable and wretched as if it had happened yesterday. It's true…I've gotten better. I couldn't stand to be in the flat for a whole eleven months after it happened. I moved back to Baker Street on the first anniversary of his death just to see that damned smiley face again. Mrs. Hudson was glad that I had come back and honestly… I was too.

I never really thought about the concept of soul mates until after I had met Sherlock. I suppose I'd always thought that a soul mate was someone that…you were supposed to be with forever and they filled a hole in your life that no one else could. I always thought a soul mate was a purely romantic notion…until I met Sherlock, that is. I don't exactly remember when I realised that Sherlock was my soul mate, but when I did finally think those words, I knew how true they were. People always joked about how we were a couple…and you know what, maybe we were. I don't feel anything akin to romantic love for Sherlock, and I knew he didn't feel that way for me either, but I think it is very much true that we loved each other and we were supposed to "be together". He was the brain. I was the heart. Together, we were whole.

I stood in front of Sherlock's grave like I did every week. I hadn't brought any flowers with me this week. I almost did, but as I was looking at the florist's stand I heard a little voice in the back of my mind mutter something about the "sentiment of giving someone dying plants" and I had to leave because I couldn't stop giggling. It was so very Holmesian and that made me laugh. But I came to the cemetery anyway, because I could never go for very long without talking to him. I mean, I could almost hear him telling me that I was literally talking to a rock and that wouldn't get me very far, but… the great fool of a man wasn't around to stop me so I did it anyway.

I talked to Sherlock about lots of things and as expected, the grave never talked back. But Sherlock was never in the habit of responding to me anyway if he was thinking or working, so the feeling wasn't all that different. I told him about my week at the clinic and how I very much hated the allergy season that was descending upon London. I told him about how I had deduced that Sarah's boyfriend was cheating on her and about how Mrs. Hudson had rescued a tomcat with a broken leg. She'd kept it and named it Johann. I was surprised that she didn't name it after Sherlock, but then I remembered that Sherlock would play Bach for Mrs. Hudson whenever the woman was feeling particularly blue and he always did an impromptu recital of her favourite Bach pieces for her birthday.

I finished my talk with Sherlock by telling him about Lestrade and the other Yarders. I still dropped by Lestrade's office on occasion just to chat. We'd go out to the pub for dinner and drinks at least once a week if we could. I wasn't allowed to work with them in an official capacity, but every now and again Lestrade would slip me a file with interesting forensic aspects and I would give my expert medical opinion and whatever deductions I could. I told him that Donovan and Anderson were still as annoying as ever, although Donovan was making attempts to be more civil whenever I came around.

I stood at the grave for a few more minutes, allowing a vision of Sherlock to resonate in the cool black reflection of the stone. At first, I was worried that I'd see hallucinations of Sherlock everywhere and that he would drive me mad even in his death. I never really did, which was a wonderful surprise, but I would make myself conjure visions of the man just to assure myself that I could still remember everything about him. Sure enough, there in the dark stone I could see him… those defined cheekbones and long face, the sharp grey-green eyes, the lean musculature, his graceful musician's hands, his fine suits… I allowed this vision to give me one of his genuine smiles…the smiles that were reserved only for me and Mrs. Hudson.

And damn it all if he really wasn't a beautiful man… and I felt secure enough in my sexuality to admit that…yes, my former flatmate, my partner, my companion, my best friend, my soul mate…he was the most beautiful person I knew. He was all angles and shadows and mystery, but he was also vibrant, brilliant, and soft. His colours would have been a vivid mixture of lights and darks, shadows and highlights. He was the inky black of the shadows cast in the darkest nights of London. He was the indigo of the thread that was woven in that damn coat of his. He was that fascinating aurora of green and blue and grey that filled his irises. He was the warm mahogany of his precious violin and the silver of the strings. He was the colour of tea and peppermint and leather and pine and light. He was the colour of home.

"You said I was your conductor of light," I said to the stone. "But you were mine too, Sherlock. You were mine too. I miss you and I'm still waiting for my miracle."

I kissed my fingers and then laid them on top of the stone and revelled in the feeling of the cool marble under me. I took a few seconds to pull a few weeds and kick out some dirt clods before I made my way out of the cemetery. The black car Mycroft had sent for me was still waiting by the entrance. Mycroft sent one every week to the surgery and the driver took me to the cemetery every week like clockwork. I didn't talk to Mycroft much anymore… usually only on the holidays and such, but I knew this was his way of apologising to me. It should have irritated me, I suppose…but I was done being angry. The anger had consumed me the first year and a half after he died. Actually, I had vacillated between a dangerous cycle of anger and depression that reminded me very much of my feelings after I had returned home from the war. My depression over the loss of my best friend made me angry because Sherlock had been the one to cure my depression. He'd cured me…he'd healed me, and now he was the cause of my pain. I never wanted Sherlock to be the cause of my pain…at least, not the psychological pain like this. The pain that didn't heal with time….the pain that couldn't be fixed.

The one day… I just decided that I was done being angry with him. I couldn't understand why he'd done the things he'd done. I didn't know why he told me he was a fraud. I don't know why Moriarty played games with him. I don't know why Sherlock jumped off the roof. I felt like he had betrayed me in some way that I couldn't properly voice and it ate away at my soul for such a long time. But then… one day I had switched on the radio in the flat, and it had been tuned to the classical music station. The sound of a wailing violin echoed in the flat and I almost switched it off. But then I realised the piece being played was one of my personal favourites. Sherlock had played it once and I had been completely captivated by it. He told me it was called _Zigeunerweisen_…it had been composed by a Spaniard named Pablo de Sarasate and featured melodies and harmonies that were common in the music of the Roma…the gypsies. There was something in that music that lit a spark inside my heart…it made colours flash in my brain and…totally held me entranced from start to finish. He used to play it when I was upset or when my nightmares would get particularly bad.

When I heard that piece playing on the radio, I suddenly realised that although I'm sure I had plenty of reasons to be angry with Sherlock, there weren't any good reasons. This was a man who never did anything that wasn't deliberate. Everything he did had a purpose, even if it was just a small purpose. He'd never throw himself off a building without having some sort of a purpose behind it, and I refused to believe that it was… the destruction of something so banal as his reputation that led him there. I sat in his armchair and listened to Itzhak Perlman draw out the notes of the gypsy melodies on his violin much in the way Sherlock used to do. It was a balm for my soul that I hadn't realised I needed. Time heals all wounds…bah. Time was a plaster on a sucking chest wound. I sat in his chair and let the healing power of music soothe my aching soul. The pain, the passion, and the frenetic energy being coaxed from string and wind instrument alike were like a breath of fresh air to a drowning man. I allowed the colours of Sherlock to swirl in and around me like a musical tempest of shadows and lights.

When the driver pulled up to the kerb outside Baker Street, I thanked him before getting out, as I did every week. At least this silent arrangement I had with Mycroft saved me for the cab fare. I let myself into the door of 221, not bothering to shout for Mrs. Hudson. I knew she was away visiting her sister this week. She always went to visit her sister around the anniversary of Sherlock's death. That's just how she dealt with it. Personally, I made it a point to avoid St. Bart's during that entire week. In fact… I made it a point to avoid St. Bart's most of the time anyway. I just couldn't walk by without recalling that day in all its wretched vividness.

As I climbed the steps to my flat (_our_ flat), I was suddenly aware of a sound coming from the flat that I hadn't heard in quite some time. _Zigeunerweisen_. Had I left the radio on before I went to work? I didn't remember even having it on at all. As curious and anxious as I was, I couldn't help but just stop and listen to the plaintive strains echoing out from behind the door. There was so much in those simple notes… I never understood how musicians could do that…how could they tell whole stories just by scraping horsehair across steel strings. How could they inflict pain and joy just by breathing into brass tubes or running their fingers over ivory keys? How could they…emote like that? The sound of the violin behind my door spoke of pain and wandering and loss and acceptance and a million other emotions that had no name.

My curiosity getting the better of me, I opened the door of the flat…and promptly went insane.

Sherlock was standing in front of the window with his violin tucked under his chin. His eyes were closed and the light from the late afternoon sun was bathing his lean body. He was drawing the bow across the strings with great passion and barely restrained emotion. It was an intense picture and I wondered how my mind was bringing up an image that was so vivid and life-like. Maybe I had finally gone insane and was starting to hallucinate… it seemed a little odd that it was happening three years later, but I was no psychologist.

I was content to watch not-Sherlock play for the rest of the afternoon, but then the unexpected happened. My mirage turned towards me and spoke to me. His voice was still that soft, beautiful baritone, but it had a bit of a ruffled edge to it that I couldn't ignore.

"John," he whispered. Something in my brain snapped and I felt a corresponding something in my heart twang painfully. They'd never talked to me before… that could only mean… I mean, really it was impossible…there was no way… not…

"Sherlock," I whispered back.

He didn't move except to gently put the violin back in its case. He stood there in the window in the yellow afternoon light with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. He was a little thinner than I remembered…and the circles under his eyes were darker. He had a few new scars that I could see on his hands and one cut still healing on his pale neck. He was watching me the way a woodland animal watches a human…all tense muscles and wobbly knees and wide eyes. He was clearly waiting for me to do something. I did.

I walked up to him very slowly, as if he might disappear into vapour at the slightest disturbance. When I was close enough to touch him, that's precisely what I did. He flinched a little as I raised my arm…clearly he was expecting my reaction to be a lot more violent. To be fair, I was resisting the urge to punch those perfect cheekbones into the next county, soul mate be damned. I felt the upwelling of all the years of anger, guilt, and loss spill into my heart and erupt in a violent burst of red and brown and mud. But I couldn't hit him…not now anyway… I was still afraid that he'd dissolve if I moved too quickly.

I let my hand come to rest on the left side of his chest and thankfully, it was blissfully solid. I felt the wild beating of his heart pump under my hand and I had to tell myself to breathe because I had never felt anything so glorious in all my life. It felt like a symphony under my hand, just an entire suite of life music made solely for me. I looked up at him and he looked back at me with the most… tender and apologetic look that I had ever seen on anyone's face, let alone the face of Sherlock Holmes. He reached up one thin hand and placed it over top of mine, his skin surprisingly warm. I was thrilled to feel the matching pulse at his thin wrist and I was not ashamed when I felt the hot tears begin to pour down my face. I choked back a sob when I noticed that he had one silver tear painting a streak down his face. It was a genuine tear and the solemnity and gracefulness of it made my heart explode.

I dislodged my hand from his chest, ignoring the pained look he gave me. I wrapped both of my arms around his lanky chest and held on for dear life. I felt the lean musculature tremble underneath me in…what, fear? Anticipation? Love? Gratitude? I held on tighter, one arm wrapped around his shoulder blades and the other squeezing around his waist. I sighed as I felt his arms reach up around my shoulders and cling to them, one warm hand resting at the base of my neck.

He really wasn't _that_ much taller than me, so I was able to feel him press his cheek against my hair, his breath softly ruffling the strands. The movement was so natural…it felt like we had practiced it a dozen times. To be completely fair, this was the most physical contact we'd ever had and I made a mental note to amend that. I was definitely going to need to hug this man more often, to hell with whatever he would say about the sentiment. We fit so naturally together…in every way possible and it was so much better than any sort of sordid romance people imagined between us. So much better.

We didn't need to say anything. It wouldn't have been right…not at that moment anyway. The words would come eventually, and I was fairly certain that I would indeed punch the man within the next fourteen to twenty-five minutes, give or take. I don't know how he survived or why he faked dying or…anything. The questions were burning a small hole in the back of my head, but I tamped them down because there was so much more that was important in this moment. I was angry, yes. I was upset. I was infuriated, even. But I was also happy and warm and grateful that this man, this beautiful, impossible man was back in my life. He hadn't taken himself away from me and that's all that counted. I was going to hit him and it would hurt a lot, but right now I just wanted to hold him to assure myself that he was back and to assure him that even though I was angry and I had been so lost without him…I still believed in him and I was still…his and he was still mine.

I couldn't tell you how long I nestled in his embrace and he into mine. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours…we didn't feel the need to keep track. Once or twice he turned and pressed his lips into my hair…not as a sexual advance but merely a reminder. _I'm here and I love you and I am so sorry. _I responded by smoothing my hands up and down the angled planes of his back. _I'm angry and I love you and I believe in you. _It meant so much more than the words would have.

I inhaled deeply and smelled the scent that was purely Sherlock. It smelled like tea and peppermint and something vaguely cinnamon-y. It smelled like old books and latex gloves and the almond soap he loved. It smelled like petrichor and London and smoke. The blend of smells and the feeling of Sherlock's body held in my embrace painted a world of colour that I would have paid to see on a canvas. He was the colour and the smell and the taste of home and it was the thing that healed all of my hurts and eased all of my scars. He was home and nothing else mattered.

And twenty-seven minutes later he sat completely still as I pressed an ice-pack to the bruised skin on his face and I held one to my swollen knuckles. We sat together on the couch and precisely thirteen seconds later, we burst into a fit of giggles and I revelled in the colour of his smile.

He fell asleep with his head on my shoulder and I let my head rest on his mop of dark curls and I wouldn't have traded the feeling for the world.

Home. At last.

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**A/N: Really, go to YouTube and listen to Itzhak Perlman play Zigeunerweisen. It's a balm for all your ills. Thanks for reading, as always. :)**


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